Last Chapter of Hidden Lake Academy / Ridge Creek School?

We have just learned that Ridge Creek School in Dahlonega has closed its doors. Any plans to let the school open under a new name seem not to be emerging any time soon.

Hidden Lake Academy did open its doors back in 1994. Very soon it became one of the most well-known therapeutic boarding schools in Georgia.

They opened a wilderness program which they used for evaluation of coming boarding school students. Maybe too many were "diagnosed" as suiting for the regime the school wanted to use in order to treat the students.

It didn't take many years before the first complaints became public. After the internet became widespread it was no longer possible to keep former unsatisfied students from communicating with each other.

Lawsuits were in the making. Change of staff and management over the time did not improve the situation. The rather isolated environment which the school had established itself in made it rather difficult to attract employees with the right type of education. Sometime the employees who had to deal with the students on daily basis were only just out of high school.

Were there power trips executed by the employees? According to various testimonies it was very often the case. Inexperienced and uneducated staff given too much power in such an environment is an explosive combination no management should allow but what does the management do when the shareholders demand profit?

As result suicide or suicide attempts is an all too common thing happening to the alumni’s.

The news station FOX5 did cover the last months of the timeline up to the closure. 10 to 15 years too late after many opinions. It is not a pretty sight.

What do the future hold for the local community in now where one of their larger workplaces is closing down? It doesn't look good. All too many group homes and therapeutic boarding schools are establishing themselves out in the countryside where they force the local communities to become dependent of them.

Was there something overlooked by the local authorities due to this marriage of pure need between the school and the local authorities? Did the political establishment and law-enforcing agencies try to play some of their more extreme occurrences at the school down in order to save jobs for the local community?

Many things indicate that it was the case.

And when it comes to cover-ups in scandals in group homes, foster care families and therapeutic boarding schools it is rather common. Even as far away as in Denmark we have learned that local teachers and other locals did complain about violence at a foster care family in the Danish hamlet named Mern. 20 years some knew that something was very, very wrong. Reports were made and they were lost - by whom? The police investigation by the local police is not targeted at other than the accused parents. None want to investigate such a cover-up. Everybody knows that thousand of DKK exchange hands between social services, foster care families and group homes.

• Should Denmark be anything different than Pennsylvania known for the Kids-for-Cash scandal?


• Should Denmark be anything different that just the next educational consultant which are paid both by parents to find the best treatment for their child and the various schools and programs for sending the child to their school?

It would be naive to believe so!

But back in Georgia everybody are now waiting to see whether the closure is the end of 17 years of suffering among teenagers or it will be the start of a new chapter under a different name.

Only the future will tell.

Sources:
Hidden Lake Academy on Fornits Wiki
I-Team: Ridge Creek School, Fox 5 news, July 8, 2011
I-Team: Ridge Creek School Closes, Fox 5 news, August 1, 2011
Children abused for 20 years, by Jes Højen Nielsen, Denmarks Radio, August 1, 2011

Marketing traps is the basis of the industry

I-Team: Ridge Creek School: MyFoxATLANTA.com

Fox has investigated Ridge Creek School - formerly known as Hidden Lake Academy.

It is by far the first care where parents have been fooled by deceptive marketing to enroll their children in residential programs only to find out that nothing they saw on the homepage had anything to do with the reality.

It doesn't help to visit the schools. The students parents may talk to are students chosen by the school and offered the favor of promoting the schools in return for advancement in the program or even early release.

If parents really want to protect their teenagers they should choose out-patient therapy where they can intervene if the situation gets out of hand. Secondly they should take the chances by the social services or even at the justice system. Then of course it would be a question if the foster care system protects the children well enough and there are flaws, but in the public system they have appeals and they can urge the media to go after the social workers who neglect their jobs.

Once you are up against a private company you as a parent has not the right to be given oversight about what is happening with your own child.

Parents should be very carefully not to grant custody of their own children to private firms obviously operating only for profit both inside the United States and outside.

A very special Christmas greeting

All over the world children are right now not together with their parents on Christmas Eve. Removed from their parents and placed in residential programs for so-called treatment, they are robbed off their freedom. Very often not because they have committed any crime, very often just because they live on terms with the youth culture of 2010 parented by parents who base their values on the values from their own childhood, which were between 1960 and 1980.

Back then there was no Internet. The cold war had a deep impact on how we lived our lives. In general we had little knowledge of how other people lived their lives.

Today every teenager knows that the very people who make their music, their movies have problems on their own. They learn of the arrests, the drug use even before it is published in the newspapers we as parents buy down at the shop. They also learn of earth quakes, hunger, war and other cruel events on humanity minutes, sometime even seconds after such news happen.

Are they allowed to be worried? Are they allowed to show their frustration – to hit the wall or shout out their grief, show their anger?

No, because we have made some new moral standards where life is not allowed to hurt!
Here is our message to our children:

If life becomes too hard for you then there is a pill for it. If that pill does not work, we have a secluded place for you with a simple version of the normal life you so obvious cannot cope with.

So these children suddenly find themselves isolated from family and friends and they are not even given a trial so they can step up and explain their behavior.

Is it odd that some of them try to run away? That they find themselves in a so awful situation that an escape seems to be the only answer?

Of course not!

But the awful about such a situation is that it very easy becomes a criminal act where people – staff, neighbors or police officers - risk being victim of actions occurring during their escape.

Many parents tend to choose to place their children at a correctional boarding school as a pre-emptive choice so they can prevent their children from a life in crime - a choice which is easy to understand if the law looks at crime done by minors in the same way as a crime done by adult. If a society chooses to punish every day activity as drinking a beer with friends, then parents get scared. They recognize a juvenile court system not targeting helping the teenagers. The stories about horrible juvenile prisons and group homes with abuse are known. Cases where judges are paid off by owners of juvenile prisons are also known.

So the parents often turn to professionals which they believe would do a better job. However they are not aware how a certain recommendation is given. It is given based on a referral fee. Thousands of dollars changes owner and then a child is removed from the home.

When the children are locked away in residential treatment centers where the mix of staff is 1-40 when it comes to professional treatment specials compared to people earning minimum salary with an experience a few months out of the high school, they are very fast to adapt a subculture based on negative peer group experiences. It doesn’t matter how strict the rules are or how friendly the names of the teams and dorms sound. Sub-cultures will always form and the children will learn how to navigate in this system. Basically they will try to survive as any human being placed in an unfamiliar and hostile environment.

So when the residential treatment center shuts down for the day and leave a lonely night staff to supervise dozen of teenagers all over the treatment center, some of the children could choose to run. If they are discovered then they could choose to fight. When they are discovered by neighbors or the police they could choose to steal cars and run.

It was what did happen in Lumpkin County in Georgia where two girls named Daniella Albegiani and Julieann Vaughn fought a single staff member, took a car and tried to drive away from the police. They are now in jail and will spend their Christmas away from their family. The bond is low, but still they have not been picked up by their family. Why the parents are not present in the lives of their daughters? We can only guess how the parental responsibility is non-existing in this case.

These girls choose to do the crime because they were already doing the time. We cannot know whether the conditions in the local jail is better than at the correctional boarding school they attended, but research done on the internet tell a story which seem to indicate that their situation is basically the same with the difference that they now will get a criminal record due to their escape.

We must remember that while teenagers like these girls may not worsen their situation by going to jail instead of living in a wilderness program, private boot camp or a correctional boarding school, they did risk the health of the neighbors and police officers.

That’s why we as owners of private properties always have to ask questions when a private so-called treatment center wants to establish themselves next door. The police should ask that laws order the residential treatment centers to report every single incident of restraint and runaways. Only when the full extent of the operation is known to the public then the local community can know what they need to handle every time some of the children try to run.

Georgia needs to make new legislation. The staff member was hurt but the management of this correctional boarding school had to intend to report this act of violence before the police began their investigation. It was only when the police entered the boarding school that they learned the full story. It is wrong!

What also is wrong is that some states allow children in residential care when a correctional boarding school chooses to name their place something else. In South Carolina a correctional boarding school named Carolina Springs Academy was shut after a similar escape took place. Now they are trying to reopen as a Christian boarding school which demands no regulation. Why we have to ask? The risk for the neighbors is the same despite the name of the school.

We can only send a plea to the government of South Carolina to update the laws so a residential solution for minors shall answer to the same minimum standards despite what they choose to call their facility.

As for Miss Albegiani and Miss Vaughn we can only urge their parents to act like parents instead of being such of name only.

It is impossible to understand why the parents did choose to break up their family, but please reunite it in the name of humanity.

We must hope that 2011 will prove that residential placement of minors is a thing of the past. Problems start in the local community. They need to be fixed in the local community. If you doubt this please ask Miss Albegiani and Miss Vaughn. They are not worse off in the local prison compared to the school, but they would properly prefer not to have chosen to commit a crime suiting them doing the time.

Dear Albegiani and Vaughn

Merry Christmas to you and anybody else in that awful situation. We don't support your actions, but understand how you came to taking them. May you find your way to freedom and home in the end.

Regards

References:
Inmate locator - Lumpkin County sheriff
Students charged with assault, robbery of teacher, The Dahlonega Nugget
Datasheet about Ridge Creek School on Fornits Wiki
School of Troubles: Another chance for abandoned boarding school, Independent Mail
Datasheet about Magnolia Hills Christian School

Why does children need to criminalize themselves before they can get a legal defence

This week two girls ran from a correctional boarding school in Georgia. They assaulted a lonely night staff member and took the car. The police got involved and it resulted in damage to a lot of property.

Now the girls are resting at the Lumpkin County Detention Center waiting for a trial where they are charged with aggravated assault, armed robbery, second degree criminal damage to property and conspiracy to commit aggravated assault and armed robbery.

It is first now where they have hurt another person, done damage to property that they get what most people consider a basic human right. The right to a legal defense based on their actions.

They saw no lawyer before they were forced from their home to this school or even worse to a wilderness program as a step before entering the school. Wilderness programs which have claimed the lives of teenagers both in 2009 and 2010.

They saw no lawyer before they was denied communication with their peers back home or maybe even parts of their extended family who may not have agreed with the detention their parents had decided on.

Why are we pushing these kids into a corner where they see no other alternative to react in such a violent nature that the society have to charge them and supply them with a criminal record?

It is far from the first incident. Turn-about Ranch recognized from the Dr. Phil show did experience two staff members being beat up by three teenagers in 1994.

A case which caught national attention was when 3 pregnant teenagers escaped New Hope Maternity Home beating up the wife of the director as they feared that they would have become a part of the many adoption schemes which had been operating in the United States the last 3 decades.

However many of these cases are never known for the public. In the case from Georgia the boarding school did not report the assault. Why? They had a hurt employee!

The answer are simple: The parents pay for a product. They fear that the lifestyle of their child would end up in a criminal record at one point. In a society where 1 percent of the entire population is locked up in prison, this is a real risk. The school did choose to put the product over the safety of their employee. One employee to guard an entire dorm in a school that can house hundred of teenagers. It is close to neglect by it self!

So they order a pre-emptive arrest of their own child. They order a private youth transportation firm to collect their child in their own home in handcuffs and legirons. Then the child is sent to a remotely located boarding school if they are so lucky that they can avoid the boarding school.

No lawyer - no right to a trial - no defence.

And the worst part is that the supreme court has given parents this right if they just see to one thing. Every restraint, every physical force used against their child has to be done by a hired person. First then it is legal. If parents put their own child in handcuffs and force them to go, the parents will go to prison.

But for the child the abuse must seem to be the same. It doesn't matter who is doing this to them.

All kind of advice given by the parents are lost:

"Do not walk with strangers." Well when they cuff you on command by us parents, it is OK.

"We will protect you against all evil". Then you like poor Aaron Bacon, Sergey Blashchishen, Shanice Nibbs and many others die out in the desert where is the truth in this statement?

We are forcing these kids to violence when we neglect them in such a way.

There is no other solution than to get the Supreme court to reconsider their ruling and demand that every child has a right to a hearing at their local social services before they are removed from their home and sent to a boarding school, boot camp or wilderness program.

Every person should be entitled to a legal defense before they are removed from our society. Also and especially a child.

References:
Students charged with assault, robbery of teacher, By Matt Aiken, The Dahlonega Nugget, December 1, 2010
3 teens sentenced for beating 2 counselors, Deseret News, Aug. 27, 1994
3 Pregnant Teens Attack Utah Group Home Director With Frying Pan, Flee in Stolen Van, FoxNews, January 19, 2007